


a whole army, small but not giving in

by Anonymous



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Brief Mention of Suicide, College Student Sakusa Kiyoomi, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Pro Volleyball Player Miya Atsumu, Self-Harm, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29901951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Kiyoomi retreats to his bathroom, seeking relief in self-destruction to pretend that everything isn't falling to pieces. Atsumu finds him and offers relief in the comfort of his affection instead.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 55
Collections: Anonymous





	a whole army, small but not giving in

**Author's Note:**

> title from kmd (and you are ever so dear in our hearts because of it!) by american poetry club
> 
> i hope you're all safe and as well as you can be  
> please mind the tags!
> 
>  **additional warnings**  
>  hitting your head as a means of self harm,  
> biting knuckles,  
> minor somewhat graphic description of infection,  
> minor graphic description of cutting too deep + blood

When Kiyoomi shifts, the toilet creaks under him and he belatedly realises that being 192cm makes sitting on a toilet lid probably not a good idea. Aside from the discomfort—the small toilet in his apartment bathroom is not big enough for anyone, nor is anything made of ceramic particularly comfortable—there’s a risk that he might break it. And then he’d be shut in his bathroom, spiraling and shaking out of his own skin, an assortment of items he shouldn’t have in front of him, plus a broken toilet.

The broken toilet really wouldn’t help.

Logic dictates, therefore, that he should get off the toilet. He could sit on the edge of the bath, but that probably held the exact same problems as the toilet. In such a cramped space, there weren’t really any other places to sit. The floor was an option, but Kiyoomi would much prefer not to. He already feels weak, paralysed with unsteady breaths, thin t-shirt not enough to keep him warm. Sitting on the floor—well, he might as well just give up.

The objects on the counter mock him.

 _Haven’t you given up already?_ they ask.

The thought puts Kiyoomi’s hands in his hair, and the rough pulls against his scalp ease the despair that flares in his chest, just a little. It was a dumb idea though, because his fingers come back covered in the grease of days-unwashed hair, so now his lungs are stifled _and_ he’s uncomfortable, wracked with the urge to wash his hands until they’re dry and cracked and falling apart. The oil never goes away, never leaves; somehow it settles deep in the crevices of his skin at the same time it only ever sits on the top layer like a thin, suffocating film.

But he can’t get up. He’s glued to this toilet, curled with his knees to his chest, trembling like a stupid fucking leaf because it’s far below room temperature, he’s only wearing one of Atsumu’s old cotton t-shirts, and his heart is trapped, locked in his mouth.

He wonders if it’s normal to be so fucking scared of some simple household objects. If it’s normal to sit and avoid eye contact with the hydrogen peroxide, the box of razors, the scissors, the pencils.

He can’t look at any of them.

Ironic, considering what he’s been thinking of for the past two weeks.

His stomach twists and it feels like a riot, like a deluge in his head. It’s overwhelming, all-encompassing, how his mind can’t escape. He asks himself for the billionth time how he’ll ever feel happy again, how he’ll ever be okay again. His future is curtained, black drapes hanging over the already black miasma it spews, and Kiyoomi’s chest collapses.

He feels like he’s breathing through a straw, and he knocks his head back against the wall. He tries to focus on the dull blooming sensation instead of the compounding weight on his ribs, tries to sink into the pain instead of the fact that nothing is okay, nothing will ever be okay and there is no conceivable way out. Kiyoomi is drowning, lost under the sewer waste of everything he has ever ignored.

He’s falling, tripping over his own two feet, a mess of tangled limbs and tangled organs. The hole he falls into is a maelstrom, an endless void of invasive tendrils that take hold of all the nerves in his body and tighten like a tourniquet.

Kiyoomi used to think this—the peroxide, the desire for something, anything sharp enough—was illogical. Unreasonable. It didn’t make any sense to him. He thought he could never understand, would never understand.

Jokes on past-him though, because he was already banging his head against walls long before he ever thought about something less blunt-force and more sharp cut. At least he’d still had enough brain cells left over to stop himself from ever doing it much. The relief wasn’t worth, what, brain damage?

The thought drags a sad sob from his cracked, bitten lips, and as much as he knows how bad it is, the weight of his desire is a two tonne truck, veering into him with all the elegance of a car crash. In this moment, nothing would ever feel more comforting than the muted thrum of pain that came from thwacking his head against something hard.

When he imagines what he looks like, a quivering mess sat atop the toilet, clothed only in his boyfriend’s t-shirt and a pair of old, withering sweats, holed up under the fluorescent light of his bathroom, alone with nothing but things he can use to hurt himself—nausea rolls through him.

The sink mirror isn’t facing him. It hangs on the adjacent wall, and Kiyoomi sees nothing but the reflection of the yellowing wall paint. His fists clench, and his nails dig into his palms with his warring conflictions. The sickness is still there, bubbling in his gut, and half of him wants to punch the mirror, punch its miserable fucking image and watch it splinter and smash; the other half of him wants to simply turn around, put the toilet through its paces and have it hold his weight there instead as he tries even more to recede into himself.

The common denominator remains: he does not want to see himself, and cruel understanding dawns on him like the abhorrent finality that comes with the sound of a funeral bell. With a crushing, debilitating ache in his heart, he realises that he is so, so painfully sorry to everyone he has ever met, and he wishes for nothing more than to apologise to them all for ever having to look at him.

His knuckles find their way to his mouth without a second thought, and when his emotions surge, when his head fills with so much metaphysical bile it feels like his skull is cracking open, he bites down hard enough to bruise the bones underneath.

He doesn’t stop until the heaviness in his chest eases.

When he takes his hand away, saliva dribbles down his arm and he feels revolting.

He rests his forehead on his knees, breathing shoddy but less laboured than before, and it takes everything not to rear back and let his head hit the stiff plates of his kneecaps.

The cold air of the bathroom sweeps over the damp spots on his fingers and he can feel them drying. It’s disgusting enough that he stumbles off the toilet to run his hands under the water. He keeps his head down, avoiding the mirror and his own pitiful reflection as he pumps soap onto his skin and starts to scrub.

As he goes to wipe his hands, he accidentally knocks the pencils off the counter. Of every sound that’s been through this space in the last however long he’s been stuck in here, from his panicked, gasping breaths to the heaving of his clogged, wet lungs, this one is the loudest.

They bounce on the tiles, their echo sharp and piercing, and Kiyoomi swallows around the lump in his throat.

In the silence that follows, he’s reminded of what he wanted—wants—to do.

He is hyper aware of the bare skin on the insides of his wrists. How it burns. How it itches.

The awareness forces open a space in his limited little skull and it’s blinding red hot, pressing up against the backs of his eyes. The heat that drips from his tear ducts feels like it’s boiling.

He cradles his wrists close to his chest, curling his hands inward. It makes him feel a little safer, a little less scared.

Still, his wrists itch.

Kiyoomi doesn’t want to be here.

He doesn’t want to be anywhere, much less standing in front of pencils on the floor, scissors and blades on the sink top, hydrogen peroxide to the side.

He doesn’t want to die.

He doesn’t want to die.

He just—he doesn’t know how it’ll ever be okay again. He doesn’t know how to make things better, how to feel better. How to think of the future and see a possibility where he could be anything but hopeless, anything but left for fucking dead.

The impulse to reach out and grab the razors is terrifying, and it rattles in the confines of his mind like a siren, a warning for an impending disaster.

He almost does. Almost, if not for the fear that drives through his body and grips at his throat. The fear of how easy it would be for it to get infected, for dirt to climb into the tears of his skin, for it to grow green, black, purple, yellow—a vile camouflage, as if to mock him for ever trying to hide. His hands shake, even now, and it would be so easy to mess up, to cut too deep, to gouge out the arteries in his arm and see the blood pool everywhere, splatter against his face and clothes and legs, to drench him in the blackened red sludge of his own poisonous blood.

Instead, he drops to the floor, crouching and tucking his face away. The images make his heart race, pounding against his ribcage like a beast needing to be let loose. He doesn’t know how to breathe anymore, gulping down air without pause, his ears filling with crackling white noise. He feels like he’s about to topple over, even so low to the ground, and his head is a deadweight.

Through it all, his wrists still burn.

A weak, frustrated cry breaks through the iron gate of his clenched teeth and he resorts to rubbing his arms over the fabric of his sweats, hoping the friction will cease the way he wants nothing more than to rip his skin off, consequences be damned.

If he cuts with a blade and it’s too deep, it’s the end.

But, Kiyoomi thinks, there’s an odd sort of comfort in knowing that’s it.

If he fucks up one last pathetic time, at least he doesn’t have to live with the repercussions. It’s a selfish, repulsive thought, maybe, but Kiyoomi’s spent the better part of his life running from his problems, despite what it looks like. Perhaps then he’d be able to properly evade them once and for all.

A cowardly way to go for a cowardly piece of fucking shit.

When he finally satiates the itch, he can’t keep himself still. His skeleton is shivering and his hands quake, and he is so, so cold. Goosebumps cover his flesh, the hair on his arms standing straight, and he’s too afraid to flip them over and see the other side.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there for, staring at the tiles of the floor, at the darkness of his own shadow. Eventually, he garners the effort to stand and shuffle to the toilet, crumpling into a balled mess on the ceramic. When his tired eyes meet the objects next to the sink, he doesn’t have the energy to look away.

At some point, the sound of keys in the door comes through the walls and Kiyoomi’s heart seizes for a moment before he remembers there’s only one other person who has access to his apartment.

He knows what this situation looks like, what the only conclusion can be considering everything. He can only hope he doesn’t look as much of a mess as he feels, but he knows the truth of that too. There’s no point in hoping for anything anymore.

Three tentative knocks.

“Omi?”

He wants to answer, wishes he could say something, even just so Atsumu doesn’t get the wrong idea. But when he tries to speak, no sooner than the pressure builds in his throat does it die out. His lips stay shut, barely the hint of a murmur escaping, and he is so pitifully weak.

“Is it okay if I come in?”

Part of him doesn’t want him to, wants Atsumu to go away and leave him here to rot in his shame and disgust. It’s the same voice that tells him nobody cares, that if he were to pack his bags and leave, fly to Switzerland in the middle of the night and disappear in the Alps between snow-tipped mountains and the endless sky, that nobody would bother.

When he’s alone, stuck with nothing but his own thoughts, and he wonders if anyone would even notice, would wonder where he went, would think to go after him—it’s that voice that wiggles its way into his chest and burrows deep in muscle and organ tissue, tearing apart any belief he could ever have that someone would.

“Omi, I’m gonna open the door now.”

The voice never quiets, even as the door creaks open and that someone steps in.

Atsumu’s hair is ruffled, like it’d been styled before but hands had run through the strands multiple times. He’s wearing his MSBY jacket over loose workout clothes and it registers in the back of Kiyoomi’s mind that he must’ve just come from practice.

Kiyoomi watches the realisation unfold on Atsumu’s face. His gaze flicks to the sink first, and Kiyoomi can pinpoint the moment it clicks. His eyes widen and they immediately track back to Kiyoomi’s hunched form, scanning him over. The action makes tears cloud his own eyes, and he focuses on the floor by Atsumu’s feet.

“Hey, baby,” Atsumu says, tone soft but not pitying. He bends down to pick up the pencils left on the floor and leaves them on the counter. “You okay?”

More tears bubble up in lieu of an answer, shuddering breaths crowding in the back of his throat, and Kiyoomi feels more than sees Atsumu huddle close. He leans on the edge of the tub next to him, sitting down tentatively. His warmth is comforting, even without Kiyoomi touching him physically, and he hates how much he craves it, craves the solace he doesn’t deserve. He can never describe himself as selfless, not in the same way that Atsumu is, and it’s just another reminder of how loathsome he is.

Kiyoomi chokes on a sob when Atsumu’s fingers, calloused but familiar, gently wrap around one of his hands. His thumb traces little patterns on the back, taking care to avoid the bruises on his knuckles. Patience writes itself in the motion, tender and delicate in a way that makes his heart twinge.

Besides his quiet cries, there is nothing but silence. Even so, Kiyoomi hears the unspoken words.

_Take as long as you need. I will still be here._

Under the weight of Atsumu’s presence, of the reassurance that his existence carries, Kiyoomi’s stuttered breaths start to slow.

Atsumu has always felt like being welcomed home. When he looks at Kiyoomi, it’s as though the rest of the world falls away, and they’re the only ones that remain. His devotion is sunlight breaking through clouds, bright and warm and soft. There is no greater security than to love and be loved by him.

When Kiyoomi’s throat finally unlocks enough for him to speak, his mumbles are near soundless. The most he manages is a murmur of Atsumu’s name.

“It’s okay,” Atsumu says, clasping his hand entirely. “It’s okay. I’m here, Kiyoomi.”

Kiyoomi squeezes Atsumu’s hand, feeling the heat of his palms soak into his bones.

He squishes back, and Kiyoomi can hear the concern in his voice when he says, “You’re freezing, baby.”

Kiyoomi knows. His closet has numerous hoodies, some stolen from Atsumu, most his own. He knows they’re all freshly washed, ready to wear.

His also knows his skin is icy to the touch, and his teeth chatter intermittently. He hasn’t stopped trembling since he’d stuck himself in the bathroom.

There’s something about the cold that Kiyoomi hates. He thinks it’s the way the tremors run through him like constant earthquakes, how it feels like it’ll never end, like no matter how much he lets himself shiver, submits to the shaking of his soul, it will never be enough.

In the end, it’s just another tool to hurt himself.

“Do you think you can stand?”

Kiyoomi doesn’t think he can do much, limbs heavy and energy drained. The worst of it seems to have passed, but all it leaves is an empty, nauseating feeling in his stomach.

He shakes his head.

“I can carry you,” Atsumu says.

He tightens his arms where they clamp around his drawn up knees as shame trickles down his spine. He knows Atsumu means well, and yet his mind is twisted, cruel in the way it sharpens everything to a fine, cutting point.

It’s the shame he uses to push deep breaths from his lungs as he goes to stand on wobbly, weak legs. He hears Atsumu yelp as he realises what Kiyoomi’s doing, and then there are strong arms enveloping him, cradling him close.

“Omi, you surprised me,” he says.

Kiyoomi barely resists the urge to sink into the hug. Atsumu’s voice is closer now, and he’s surrounded by the deep rich timbre. It feels like safety and comfort and everything Kiyoomi has ever wanted.

“Sorry,” he mutters. His own arms hang awkwardly between them and he ends up leaning into Atsumu anyway. He can’t suppress his flinch when the insides of his wrists touch Atsumu and he’s reminded of the raw, tender state of his skin.

They’re standing too close for Atsumu to have missed it, and Kiyoomi wants to break away.

“Shit, are you hurt?” Atsumu’s eyes are wide, full of worry, and Kiyoomi hates himself for concerning him.

“I’m fine,” he says, but the shaky, airy quality of his voice belies the truth.

Atsumu doesn’t look like he believes him, and Kiyoomi doesn’t blame him.

“I didn’t—didn’t do anything,” he adds. _Because I’m a coward. Because I was too scared._

Atsumu looks like he wants to protest, but he refrains, and Kiyoomi is grateful.

“Okay,” he says, “okay. Then—let’s get out of here. I’ll make you tea, yeah?”

And maybe things haven’t been great; maybe they’ve been difficult, bearing down on him until he’s little more than crudely glued shards of a whole. But the way Atsumu brushes a curl from his eye and presses a soft kiss to his temple, murmuring, “We’ll get you some camomile and honey,” makes it easier to believe that for just this moment in time, things could be okay.

It takes them some time to waddle out of the bathroom since Atsumu doesn’t want to let go or leave him by himself yet, and his defence is, “It’s just for my sake, humour me, Omi-kun.” Kiyoomi is too tired to argue.

Atsumu eventually detaches from him when he’s securely sat Kiyoomi on the bed, MSBY jacket draped over his shoulders. He leaves with a gentle kiss to go make the tea.

Only once he’s gone to the kitchen does Kiyoomi inhale deeply and gather up the courage to look at his arms. They’re more red than he’d thought they’d be, but they’re just sore, not burned. He doesn’t really know what he expected, but looking at it makes him feel hollow.

He’s not sure what he’s more disappointed by.

His hands curl into fists and he scrunches his eyes with the tears that spring up. Just something else he can’t confront. Add it to the fucking list, he thinks.

He can’t stop himself from jumping when he feels feather light touches on his hands, ghosting over the teeth marks embedded in his skin. He opens his eyes to see Atsumu’s face looking at the redness of his wrists, his expression indecipherable.

On the bedside table, resting on a coaster, is his favourite mug, the one Atsumu bought on their anniversary some time ago; it has a cute hand-drawn illustration of a weasel on the side and a stupid punchline written above. Atsumu had thought it was funny, considering his alma mater. From it, he can smell the calming aroma of camomile, and he wonders how he missed Atsumu coming in.

“Hey baby,” Atsumu says, climbing onto the bed next to him.

Kiyoomi instinctively hides his arms, even though he knows Atsumu has already seen them. Atsumu doesn’t pay any mind to the action, instead focusing on grabbing the comforter and rearranging it so it surrounds them in a warm cocoon. Then he’s gently tugging Kiyoomi to lean against his chest and Kiyoomi goes with a confused oomph. He ends up resting his chin on Atsumu’s shoulder, and when he feels a calloused hand run through his hair, he can’t help but sag. Atsumu’s other hand rests on the small of his back, pressing lightly to keep him close.

Like this, Kiyoomi is encompassed wholly by Atsumu; he is cared for, bundled in the human embodiment of love, and his heart aches with how much he wants to give Atsumu in return.

“Kiyoomi,” Atsumu says softly, leaning back to look him in the eyes. “I love you. I know I don’t say it that often, but I do. I love you so much.” One of his hands move to hold Kiyoomi’s. “And you’ll be okay, baby, I promise.” He kisses Kiyoomi’s nose, and it tickles. His gaze is a calming sunshower, light and sparkling, and it begins to ease the weight on Kiyoomi’s shoulders. “You’ll be okay.”

Atsumu moulds himself to Kiyoomi even more, erasing what little space had been between them. This close, Kiyoomi can feel the steady beat of Atsumu’s heart, and he knows he’s safe.

Despite his earlier episode, Kiyoomi finds it hard not to believe Atsumu, cradled in his embrace. Even if it’s just for a moment, with Atsumu’s arms wrapped around him and the sound of his mellow breathing by his ear, his whispered sweet reassurances, Kiyoomi can believe he’ll be okay.


End file.
